"Paradise
Is exactly like
Where you are right now
Only much much
Better" Language is a virusLaurie Anderson

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

A Quiet Week

Well, sorry, it all went quiet for a week. Apart from my birthday (which passed serenely) I helped launched a new website on Wednesday, so have anxiously nursed that along for a few days. Circus Arts Forum. A little freelance work for Arts Council of England. I remember when I used to work as solely as a freelance (all 32 years of it) - and 'they' didn't consider circus as an art requiring funding, respect and support back then.Things changed (but too late for my own performing career).

I didn’t get to The RAW Wake last weekend (all over the planet people did farewell events for Robert Anton Wilson – “who RU calling a cult?”) because my subconscious slept through the alarm to catch the train, perhaps resisting the idea of a day-off with heavy drinking, so I had a doze under the duvet for Bob instead. :-)

[UK news] Even a right-wing, conservative paper like the Daily Express has finally realised (acknowledged) that theoretical (notional) house prices do not really mean true wealth. If you own your house, and house prices go up, then you really could consider yourself better off (assuming you sell at the high point) but if you have promised to pay for it indefinitely then (in my mind) you don’t own it until you paid it off. This becomes significant when House Prices go up so much that your monthly payments go through the roof! Far from getting ‘richer’, you actually end up trying to buy a house beyond your means…or, as the Express had it:

“Mortgage Costs Are Crippling”.

Hilarious! It will hardly stop so long as everyone buys (sic) the idea that property values display the wealth of the country. You can’t lower the interest rates without people borrowing more, and demand going up. Someone has to reverse it – the music stops, you end up living on your current step in the ladder – and you stop paying out ¾ of your take-home pay just for a roof.Imagine going into the bookshop for a book costing £10, and then before you can get out the door they tell you what a bargain you have as that book now has a value of £23, so would you mind paying the other £13 before you go?

What else this week? Ah, I just got invited to join some creative team to continue developing the Maybe Logic Academy campus/collage/complex/website/thing.